Review based on 87-minutes long French version, titled L'Attaque des Morts Vivants. Which, incidentally, was badly pixelated.
Some of the most ridiculously overbearing music imaginable accompanies a throat slashing in the first scene, as a Vietnam vet returns to find his wife in bed, asleep, with some other guy. When he first tries to stab wifey too, he accidentally stabs one of their pet birds first, then proceeds to kill his wife, as well as two others who stumble onto the scene. In retaliation for killing one of their number, the other pet birds go on the claw-full attack. (This opening scene is pretty good, it has a 1970s grindhouse feel to it, but subsequent scenes look something on cable television in the late '80s. Was that the filmmakers' intent?)
Twenty years later, college students sent to research the Irian Jayan tweel-crested boobyhatch, or birds of some other kind, stumble onto the same house the killings occurred, and eventually are attacked by the zombies of the murder victims.
Zombie variation of Hitchcock's The Birds isn't entirely successful, but has a bit of atmosphere, but not really much zombie action though, mainly just a lot of lurking point-of-view shots, filmed through a diffuser.
The house is creepy in some scenes, generic looking in others. Killer birds in the first scene, then haunted house clichés in the middle, then zombies at the end makes for odd changes in the tone of the film.
Had this movie been filmed about fifteen years earlier, it might have been much better. But as it is now, it seems like a made-for-cable-television rip off of zombie movies, and The Birds.
Some of the most ridiculously overbearing music imaginable accompanies a throat slashing in the first scene, as a Vietnam vet returns to find his wife in bed, asleep, with some other guy. When he first tries to stab wifey too, he accidentally stabs one of their pet birds first, then proceeds to kill his wife, as well as two others who stumble onto the scene. In retaliation for killing one of their number, the other pet birds go on the claw-full attack. (This opening scene is pretty good, it has a 1970s grindhouse feel to it, but subsequent scenes look something on cable television in the late '80s. Was that the filmmakers' intent?)
Twenty years later, college students sent to research the Irian Jayan tweel-crested boobyhatch, or birds of some other kind, stumble onto the same house the killings occurred, and eventually are attacked by the zombies of the murder victims.
Zombie variation of Hitchcock's The Birds isn't entirely successful, but has a bit of atmosphere, but not really much zombie action though, mainly just a lot of lurking point-of-view shots, filmed through a diffuser.
The house is creepy in some scenes, generic looking in others. Killer birds in the first scene, then haunted house clichés in the middle, then zombies at the end makes for odd changes in the tone of the film.
Had this movie been filmed about fifteen years earlier, it might have been much better. But as it is now, it seems like a made-for-cable-television rip off of zombie movies, and The Birds.